Monday, December 26, 2011

E was kind enough to share these shots of his red Esprit and his thoughts about the car.

Pros:
1. The intellectual pleasure of driving a 4 cylinder car which, at the time of its launch, went quicker to 100 km/h than a 911 Turbo (6 cylinders), a Ferrari 328/348 (8 cylinders), and a Lamborghini Countach (12 cylinders).
2. Handling. No hype. Julia Roberts was right. It does drive like it's on rails.
3. Looks. It is stunning from any angle.
4. Value for money. Where can a normal car guy buy into the supercar league?
5. Bonus: Fiberglass body means no rust!

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

With all the eulogizing this week after Saab's bankruptcy, I thought I'd visit the local Saab dealership.

There were nine new Saabs there: three 9-3s, two 9-4Xs, and four 9-5s. I scooped up one of every brochure they had left. The employees there were surprisingly upbeat, holding out hope that the Chinese would buy what's left of Saab. The new Saabs do not come with warranties, despite pleadings to GM to cover the 2010 and 2011 models.

This 1967 Sonnett II is for display purposes only and belongs to a local enthusiast.

Speculation is rife about the make and model of Kim's funeral car. Something Communist, like a ZIL or a HongQi? Or maybe German, like a Mercedes or a VW Phaeton. An archival search revealed that his father, Kim Il-Sung, was transported atop an American Lincoln limo during his 1994 funeral.

Rather, starting today, I'll be a contributor to the car blog Hooniverse. It's exciting because it will give me a chance to reach a larger audience.

The plan for now is to contribute one to two posts a week to the Universe of Hoons. Tamerlane's Thoughts will continue as-is, with no changes.

I hope you will visit Hooniverse more often, not only to read my posts, but the posts of other like-minded car nuts. Though I'm new there, I can attest that Hooniverse is a labor of love, in its purest form.

The cheesy promo shows a CLK 55 beating a private plane from SoCal to NorCal. During the housing bubble in California, these coupes were everywhere. I'm sure it's a very competent car, but I just didn't see its appeal. It seems like Merc just got lazy and decided to stuff the "55" AMG engine in everything. Was there ever an A55 or B55 AMG?

I was looking for a picture of a diesel car with smoke coming out the back end but found this instead. Isn't it much cooler?

Outside the horse track yesterday, I was following an old W123 sedan. It was accelerating and spewing out tons of black soot. I held my breath, but then realized-- outside air wasn't coming inside the cabin. The Phaeton had automatically switched to recirculating air.

1. The Phaeton is equipped with an air quality sensor (G238). It's right next to the fresh air intake. When it detects pollutants outside, it closes the air flow flap and opens the air recirculation flap.

The sensor contains an oxide mixed with tungsten. The compound changes its electrical properties when it comes in contact with oxidisable or reducible gases.

Oxidisable gases include carbon monoxide, benzene vapors, petrol vapors, hydrocarbons, and unburned/incompletely burned fuel components. Oxidisable gases absorb oxygen and bind it. When the sensor comes into contact with an oxidisable gas, the gas absorbs oxygen from the mixed oxide. This changes the electrical properties of the mixed oxide in the sensor, and resistance falls.

Reducible gases include nitrogen oxides. Reducible gases pass oxygen to other elements or compounds. When the sensor comes into contact with a reducible gas, resistance rises.

If the measured resistance deviates from the default value, then the air conditioner control unit concludes that the ambient air is contaminated and starts up the automatic air recirculation function.

2. Every time the Phaeton is shifted into reverse, the recirculation function is turned on automatically so that exhaust gases do not enter the cabin.

3. And here are all 25 of the motors used to circulate air inside the cabin:

Air conditioner

- air flow flap control motor

- defroster flap control motor

- air recirculation flap control motor

- control motor for front cold air flap

- control motor for front warm air flap

- control motor for left footwell flap

- control motor for right footwell flap

- control motor for front right shut-off flap of defroster and chest vent

- control motor for front left shut-off flap for defroster and chest vent

Monday, December 12, 2011

"Soon after Mitt Romney handed out eye-popping bonuses to top performers at his private equity firm in the early 1990s, a young employee invited him to ride in his brand-new toy-- a $90,000 Porsche 911 Carrera.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

The ultra-conservative Al Nour party had a female candidate on its party slate in the recent election. Here is the campaign poster.

Can't find her picture? She's the rose, at the bottom. Al Nour actually doesn't want a woman to win, because running a government is supposedly a "man's job". So why was she running then? The law requires every party to have at least one female candidate.

Surely, birthers and their like-minded allies will see the uncanny similarity between Al Nour's logo and Obama's logo. But in reality, Al Nour's graphic designer was probably just lazy.

Every school kid in Uruguay has a laptop now as a result of Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop per Child program. This 30 minute piece not only looks at the challenges and effects of the program on Uruguay, but it also delves into the small country's recent history, the current state of its society, and its monk-like president Jose Mujica. The documentary is informative, insightful, and entertaining.